Recently in class we have been talking about a concept called #Hastivism, which is simply hash tag activism. This concept is basically helping, and supporting a particular cause, but one may ask what do the hash tags have to do with it, or the simpler question what even is a hash tag. A hash tag is a particular idea or concept that has a pound sign in front of it. Hash tag activism is the act of fighting for a particular cause that people are advocating through social media, the way they know of this cause by posting about it with a hash tag in front of it. A good example of this is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. This idea was trending on all social media and because of the fact that it was trending, everyone was doing it. It is simply a video of yourself pouring ice cold water on your head, or if you chose not to do the video, you would have to donate 100 dollars to ALS. This seems easy and effective but, when you think about it, it does not really do much but prove how stingy people are.
Many did the video, which is great because they were spreading awareness for this really bad disease, but thats about all they were doing. Everyone saw the videos and they wanted to be apart of this act so instead of donating money, which would help the cause by funding research for a cure, they would just film themselves and post it on every source of social media, and the thing is that when this was done, since the people were contributing in spreading awareness they thought that it was good enough.
I personally did participate in this challenge and I originally only filmed the video, but after discussing this concept in class I realized that I among all the others did not do anything but spread awareness, and although that seems like a lot unfortunately, it is not enough. I then went back to the ALS website and placed a donation because I realized that is in fact the only way that we could help. If people want to start getting rid of diseases like ALS we have to start donating because spreading awareness just lets people know what the problem at the moment is, and the fact that people woulf rather spread areness then actually help just proves how stingy we are.
If you ask me Hashtag Activism is not something that is bad, it is actually one of the best things that we people could follow on social media because in doing it we are not doing anything bad but spreading awareness, but, we are doing something bad because unfortunately awareness is not enough and it is a really cool concept, that I will continue to follow. I also feel like in these videos that we post supporting particular causes, we should make more of an effort as people to raise money, and stop worrying about just being a part of a trend online.
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